One Thousand, Nine Hundred and Ninety Seven

Abstract

Originally filmed in late August and early September 1997, The installation presents a 16mm film loop and a light box. Both works process and present the same black and white 16mm film strip in different ways. The length of film used is exactly 1,997 frames long, each frame containing a different individual photographed around the Royal Palaces, in London, in the few days after the death of The Princess of Wales. One Thousand Nine Hundred and Ninety Seven (film loop) (1997) The film strip is looped through a projector and run through hooks in a rectangular formation around the gallery. The images are projected directly onto the wall. The projector is situated close to the wall, rendering the images small, bright and intense. The collection of individual portraits, in themselves fleeting and insignificant, accumulate to form an epic whole. The work seeks to set up a tension between the recording and presentation of the individual moments and that of the larger historical moment. As the activity of surreptitiously taking the individual photographs was pressurised, so too the viewer struggles to keep pace with the bombardment and frantically paced changes of the film loop. The viewer seems to key into certain individuals who act as triggers to the imagination or memory. The work brings to the fore the intrusive role of the camera. Parallels appear between the photographing of people in mourning and the role of the camera in recording The Princess of Wales' life; prying and occasionally intruding, the camera reveals a range of reactions some indifferent, some uncomfortable, some engaged. One Thousand Nine Hundred and Ninety Seven (light box) (1997) The film strip is cut up into individual frames. These tiny transparencies are rearranged from the original lineage in which they were shot. New configurations and groupings of the images are placed between two sheets of glass in the light box, like historical artefacts. The separate frames are re-categorised by locations, expressions and quality of light. Using a small magnifying loupe, hanging by the box, the viewer is able to examine closely the individual portraits, setting up a strange one to one relationship between the viewer and the viewed.